The Buie Knife

One Purpose of Travel

“Travel is fatal to prejudice, bigotry, and narrow-mindedness” -- Mark Twain, "Innocents Abroad."

Or, sometimes, if one doesn't probe deep enough, travel can reinforce stereotypes. In some societies, especially those with lots of "guest workers" where your passport pre-determines how much money you make and your station in life, and people generally live in segregated compounds based on nationality, one has to make a special effort to see beyond stereotypes. The default position is to think of certain nationalities as the "servant classes," and certain nationalities as the "ruling classes." And yet, paradoxically, "guest workers" in wealthy countries who send money back home are viewed by their compatriots as having escaped the economic confinements of home for adventure and success abroad.

Related:

• Bigotry Rears Its Ugly Head
• UAE: So Many Nationalities In One Place

Day 1: From Bahrain to Bangkok

Lucia writes: We're in our hotel in Bangkok now.  Flying West to Bahrain than again back over UAE to finally reach Thailand. Anything for those cheap tickets. The redeye.  Kindly, hotel let us in at 10 am, so I have slept until now.  Jim too excited, up reading, but at last asleep.  Bahrain was an interesting airport.  The locals wear the usual man dress, and a stiff embroidered pillbox peaked in the front.  The Omanis wear a similar stiff pillbox but more of a simple dome, no architectural arch at the front.  I think Bahrain's Gulf Air (our carrier) is striving for market share.  A lot of flights to Africa and India.  People looked like figures from expat writings of the last 50 years or they looked liked models in "Anthropologie" (you know that woman's clothing catalog?) with their lovers.  Jim thought maybe a lot of Europeans transiting to India and Africa.

Time on flight was mixed.  Some absolute jerks sat behind us.  It was obvious why they were going to Bangkok.  Somebody had said to me you look at all the single men in Bangkok and shiver with disgust. These guys were horrible to the stewardess who got her manager involved.   Then, they began to kick both Jim and my seats.  Unbelievable.  Stewardess suggested we move elsewhere which we quickly did, but didn't really sleep the entire flight.  Excellent dinner served with free alcohol.

 

In preparation for Cambodia, before we left UAE we got tetanus booster, yellow fever vaccination, typoid vaccination and Hep B (no Hep A available).  Also, taking anti-malarial.  Feel a little weird today, but no fever or real soreness from yellow fever shot.  We should be good for a number of countries for quite some time now.

24 Days in Southeast Asia: Paradise and Hell on Earth

After 24 extraordinary days, 8 hotels, 7 cities in Thailand, Cambodia and Vietnam, and trying to calculate 6 currencies in our heads, my wife and I are safely back in Abu Dhabi, UAE. It was so cheap -- costing about what 10 days in Europe would have cost us -- and mind-boggling, veering between paradise and hell on earth, sometimes in a single day!

Hell: Desperate, muddy poverty at the Thai/Cambodian border, in the towns of Aranyaprathet, Poipet and Siem Reap; the Choeung Ek Killing Fields Memorial of Cambodia and the Tuol Sleng Genocide Museum in Phnom Penh; the War Remnants Museum in Ho Chi Minh City, evoking horrific memories of the American war; the Cu Chi Tunnels used during that war to outwit the Americans; the Khe Sanh battlefield and American airstrip, now abandoned. Even though these were not exactly pleasurable experiences, they are historically important, fascinating, challenging and unforgettable to experience.

Heaven, or Nirvana: Magnificient Buddhist temples (Wat Pho; Wat Arun, Wat Phra Kaew in Bangkok); the re-discovered empire of Ankhor Wat in Cambodia; a Mekong Delta tour in Southern Vietnam; the beautiful resort town of Hoi An in central Vietnam and the magnificent Halong Bay in Northern Vietnam's Gulf of Tonkin, where we went on a three-day cruise; and lots of cheap, delicious, Asian food. 

We had to navigate among six currencies, calculating and recalculating the value  of Thai baht, Cambodian riel, Vietnamese dong, Bahraini dinar, UAE dirham, and American dollars. That kept our heads swimming. At first it just seemed like so much Monopoly money, but in time we mastered the cost if not the value of most things.

I've started a small slideshow on Facebook of photos and observations from Vietnam:

and Lucia has posted highlight photos of our trips to the three countries:

Cambodia; 

Bangkok, Thailand; and 

Vietnam.

The photos are classified as public but you may not be able to access them unless we are Facebook friends.

Travel as a Political Act

"I would like travelers, especially American travelers, to travel in a way that broadens their perspective, because I think Americans tend to be some of the most ethnocentric people on the planet. It's not just Americans, it's the big countries. It's the biggest countries that tend to be ethnocentric or ugly. There are ugly Russians, ugly Germans, ugly Japanese and ugly Americans. You don't find ugly Belgians or ugly Bulgarians, they're just too small to think the world is their norm." — Rick Steves

"Ideally, travel broadens our perspectives personally, culturally, and politically. Suddenly, the palette with which we paint the story of our lives has more colors."
— Rick Steves (Travel as a Political Act)

"Travel is rich with learning opportunities, and the ultimate sourvenir is a broader perspective."
— Rick Steves

Our Slideshow of the Greek Isles

We've visited Santorini, Rhodes, and Mykonos, and loved Santorini best of all. Above, view from our hotel room in Santorini. Click.

Greece: Photo Essay and History Lesson

Athens, the Foundation of Western Civilization, and Delphi, Ancient Center of the Universe. A Photo Essay on the 10 days my wife, sons and I spent in Greece. Plus, on our Turkey Blog, you can't really understand modern Turkey without studying Greek history. Two posts:

• The Poignant Story of How Modern Turkey and Greece Were Forged
• Greek Culture Has Long Penetrated American Consciousness, While Turkish Culture, and Links to Native Americans, Are Just Beginning To

Used to Justify a Travel Ad, But...

I succumb, I succumb:

"Twenty years from now you will be more disappointed by the things you didn't do than by the ones you did." Mark Twain

Never Expect, in Winter's Depth, to Make 3 European Flights in One Day

My wife Lucia recounts her January, 2010 trip from Kayseri, Turkey to Italy. First of all, she experienced harrowing flights.

The descent into Istanbul from Kayseri was one of the more terrifying I’ve experienced. The plane seesawed. There were sudden drops, leaving my stomach airborne hundreds of meters above my body. This experience left me shaking for well into my bus ride through a snow-covered Istanbul.

 I’m not sure I’ll ever do an international flight in January again. My plane to Rome was delayed an hour and a half. Once we boarded, we sat on the tarmac in a snow storm for two hours. I wish I’d had someone from the family with me. I saw many planes, angled and still; a few with dark interiors, but red beacons on, primed to go.

Finally, after an hour, my plane revved up for takeoff. It began its taxi and then lurched sideways. I turned from the window. An Italian man and a Muslim woman stared fully and thoughtfully at me. The plane came to a screeching halt.

Americans Rank Next to Last in Knowledge of the World

A few of my American friends and relatives weren't too pleased with this article I wrote for Today's Zaman, "Funny Things Americans Say About Turkey" because it revealed Americans' ignorance of world geography and culture. I tried to reassure them that this wasn't so much a reflection on them as it is a reflection on a longstanding American tradition. The United States is larger than any other countries in land mass except Russia, Canada, and China, and far more unified in language than they are. Americans feel little need to know what's going on in the rest of the world. After all, Turkey, for example, is just the size of Texas combined with Massachusetts. "How important could it be compared to the mighty US?" ethnocentric Americans might ask.  "We have 48 other states in addition to Texas and Massachusetts."

The problem with our America-centric outlook is that we tend to stumble into foreign entanglements without knowing what kind of mess we're getting into. The Iraq War, President Bush and his advisors told us, would last a few months and not cost much. Years later, we're still hoping for a way out that will have positive results. Whatever the outcome, there is little doubt that Americans were blindsided by their lack of knowledge of Iraq.

Isolationism -- "America First" and "Fortress America" -- is a continuing theme of American political history. The US scores NEXT TO LAST in a National Geographic survey of world geography knowledge. See these disturbing articles:

Geography Is Greek to Young Americans

http://www.cnn.com/2006/EDUCATION/05/02/geog.test/

Americans Shaky on Geography

http://www.msnbc.msn.com/id/12591413/

Americans Fail Geography. Are Other Nationalities Better?

http://www.rferl.org/content/article/1068259.htm

I never studied world history as a required course in school. What I've learned has, until recently, come from what I have picked up on my own. At a ripe old age, I'm filling in the gaps in my world history knowledge as I teach and tutor my son in seventh grade world history. Alas, his peers back in the states are not taking world history, but North Carolina history, something he'll have to learn later, I guess, when we return to North Carolina.

What I Miss About America, What We Americans Take for Granted

James Fallows, writing in Atlantic Monthly: "Here is the sort of thing you notice anew (about America) after being in India or China, the two rising powers of the day."

Or in my case, in fast-growing and economically thriving Turkey after three and a half months.

"There is still so much nature, and so much space, available for each person on American soil. Room on the streets and sidewalks, big lawns around the houses, trees to walk under, wildflowers at the edge of town—yes, despite the sprawl and overbuilding....The typical American I see in an office building or shopping mall, stout or slim, gives off countless unconscious signs—hair, skin, teeth, height—of having grown up in a society of taken-for-granted sanitation, vaccination, ample protein, and overall public health. I have learned not to bore people with my expressions of amazement at the array of food in ordinary grocery stores, the size and newness of cars on the street, the splendor of the physical plant for universities, museums, sports stadiums." 

In other words, be thankful for what you (we) have in America. At the same time, I don't want to encourage Americans' overweening pride, arrogance and pervasive ignorance of the world beyond our shores, or as Cullen Murphy characterized the U.S. in "Are We Rome?", like the ancient Romans we have "an exaggerated sense of self importance coupled with a myopic view of the world."

We should be open to the concept that other countries do some things better than we do in America. There are things I wish I could export or take home with me from Turkey.

Fallows' article is called "How America Can Rise Again," and is accompanied by a video interview in which Fallows notes "a uniquely American trait -- cycles of despair followed by triumphant rebirths."

My Related Articles:

• Part One: To Understand What It Means to be American, Travel
• Part Two: Americans As Adolescents on the World Stage